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August 20, 2026 - The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection will examine whether a coal mine in Westmoreland County should be allowed to expand into an 11,000 acre-area at the headwaters of two local streams.
The decision came after a five-judge Environmental Hearing Board panel ordered the agency to accept a petition by the nonprofit Mountain Watershed Association to study the issue that the DEP had initially rejected.
The decision means the state will conduct a more thorough review of the potential impacts of the Rustic Ridge mine, operated by LCT Energy of Johnstown, Pa. The mine extracts metallurgical coal, used to make steel, from a seam a few hundred feet below the surface.
The mine has expanded its footprint in recent years north of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, in Donegal Township, and is proposing another expansion, Rustic Ridge II, which would extend through an area at the top of the Jacobs Creek and Four Mile Run watersheds.
Outside the portal to the Rustic Ridge 1 mine near Donegal, Pa. By Reid Frazier, The Allegheny Front
Mountain Watershed’s attorney Melissa Marshall said the group sought to have the area declared unsuitable for mining because of its potential for impacts to water resources and wildlife habitat in the area.
“We have to live with those effects forever. When there is an issue (with water), it has to be treated in perpetuity,” Marshall said.
Stacy Magda, Mountain Watershed’s director of advocacy, said the group was also worried about impacts to private underground water supplies.
“The majority of people have private water supplies, whether springs or wells. And when you talk to those folks about their quality of water, they have good groundwater coming into their homes,” Magda said. “There’s so many different critical uses for water in this landscape and obviously protecting it from pollution or drying up it just felt like a logical and significant next step.”
The company disagreed with Mountain Watershed’s assertions.
LCT president Mark Tercek said in an email that Mountain Watershed’s claims that the mine would cause damage in the area were “wrong.”
“LCT has been mining in the headwaters of Fourmile Run for the past two years,” Tercek said. “Weekly monitoring of streams and wells in that area has shown no water loss or aquifer impacts.”
The DEP will now conduct a study of the potential impacts of the mine on water quality, habitat, and the area’s recreation and tourism industry, Marshall said.
As part of the process, DEP will hold a public hearing, accept comments, and prepare a recommendation to the state’s Environmental Quality Board for a possible rulemaking.
Debating a mine’s impact
Mountain Watershed Association initially made its petition in 2024. A hydrogeology expert hired by the group found that the mine’s activities would likely contribute to changes in water quantity, quality, and temperature in the Four Mile Run and Jacobs Creek watersheds, and that the mine would likely cause abandoned mine drainage.
The DEP initially rejected the appeal because it argued the Unsuitable for Surface Mining program was established to protect against the impacts of surface mining, and that since Rustic Ridge was an underground mine, the program didn’t pertain to it.
But the DEP later walked back this statement in oral arguments over the petition, conceding that the law applies to surface mining activities, like a mine portal, or a minewater discharge impoundment that are connected to an underground mine.
LCT’s proposed expansion includes a 70-acre mine portal, and would potentially release 2.8 million gallons of treated minewater a day into two tributaries of Jacobs Creek, a stocked trout stream in Westmoreland County.
Rustic Ridge uses ‘room and pillar’ mining techniques that leave columns of coal in place to prevent subsidence, which can impact surface dwellings, streams, and wetlands.
LCT has admitted its mining activities at an older part of the mine, Rustic Ridge #1, have caused mine subsidence, blaming poor geology. According to Westmoreland County records, the company bought three houses in the area where the subsidence occurred.
Despite these problems, the DEP recently gave the go-ahead for LCT to expand its mine crossing beneath the Pennsylvania Turnpike near its exit at Donegal.
Invoking a ‘rarely used’ program
The state’s Unsuitable for Surface Mining program came about after the passage of federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, which sought to prevent and clean up widespread environmental damage from the nation’s mining industry.
Rustic Ridge will be the first Pennsylvania mine in 30 years to undergo a review through the program, Marshall said.
“The record reflects that the UFM Program is rarely used,” Environmental Hearing Board Chief Judge Steven C. Beckman wrote, in a 66-page decision. Beckman wrote that the DEP testified that the Rustic Ridge petition was one of only two unsuitable for mining petitions filed in Pennsylvania “in roughly the past 10-12 years.”
Now that the agency has accepted the petition, it will conduct a more expansive technical review of the mine than is standard for a typical mining permit, Marshall said.
“It’s a much broader scope of review than a usual mine permit application,” Marshall said. “For example, they will look at the entire cumulative impacts from historic mining within the 11,000 acres. Whereas oftentimes with something like a mining permit application, they just have to look at, is this dangerously close to other mines?”
The review will also include an analysis of whether mining would detrimentally impact the region’s tourism and other industries that depend on water.
“If something does happen, what is the economic impact to the area of that pollution that the mine causes?” Marshall said. “In this unsuitable for mining petition review, the (DEP) does have to do that assessment.”
The DEP did not respond to requests for comment on the assessment. |
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